IB World Religions 7.2.3. Festivals: Vaisakhi, Divali and the Gurpurbs Notes

7.2.3. Festivals: Vaisakhi, Divali and the Gurpurbs

Melas and gurpurbs

1. Sikh festivals fall into two kinds. A mela, literally a fair, is a large gathering that usually sits on an older Punjabi seasonal date, while a gurpurb marks an event in the life of one of the ten Gurus.
2. The line between them is not sharp. Vaisakhi is a seasonal mela that Sikhs keep chiefly for what Guru Gobind Singh did on that day in 1699.
3. Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, is credited with turning the older seasonal dates to Sikh use by calling Sikhs to gather before him at Goindwal at Vaisakhi, Divali and Maghi.
4. Two further melas are widely kept. Maghi at Muktsar remembers forty Sikhs who died fighting for Guru Gobind Singh, and Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib fills three days with martial display.
5. Whatever the occasion, the shape of the day is similar: a complete reading of scripture beforehand, a long service, sung scripture and langar for everyone who comes.
6. Sikh festivals involve no sacrifice and no priesthood to perform one. What happens is what happens on an ordinary day, done at greater length and with far more people present.

Vaisakhi and the Khalsa

1. Vaisakhi falls in the middle of April. It marks the spring harvest in Punjab and the turn of the year in the Punjabi calendar.
2. Sikhs keep it above all for 1699, when Guru Gobind Singh summoned the Sikhs to Anandpur Sahib and founded the Khalsa.
3. The account Sikhs tell is dramatic. The Guru asked for a head, five men came forward one by one, and they emerged as the Panj Piare, the five beloved ones.
4. The Guru initiated the five with amrit, sweetened water stirred with a double-edged sword, and then asked them to initiate him in turn, so the Guru received the rite from his own disciples.
5. Men took the name Singh, lion, and women the name Kaur, princess, and those initiated were bound to a common code and to the five Ks.
6. Vaisakhi is therefore kept as the anniversary of the Khalsa appearing on earth, and many gurdwaras hold an amrit sanskar on the day so that new Sikhs are initiated on that date.
7. In Punjab the day keeps its agricultural character as well, with fairs, wrestling and bhangra dancing alongside the gurdwara service.

Nagar kirtan

1. The public face of a Sikh festival is the nagar kirtan, literally the singing of the Guru's word through the town.
2. The Guru Granth Sahib travels at the centre of the procession on a decorated float, seated under a canopy, with an attendant waving the chaur over it.
3. Five Sikhs dressed in saffron walk barefoot in front as the Panj Piare, and a party sweeps and washes the road ahead of the scripture.
4. Behind them come singers of kirtan, groups demonstrating gatka, the Sikh martial art, and school parties, with stalls handing out food free to anyone on the route.
5. The procession makes a claim in public. The Guru is not confined to the gurdwara, and the whole town is offered the Word and a meal on the same terms.
6. Nagar kirtan is most associated with Vaisakhi, but it is held for gurpurbs too, and diaspora processions in British Columbia, Southall, Birmingham and Yuba City now draw crowds in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Divali and Bandi Chhor Divas

1. Sikhs keep the autumn festival of lights for a Sikh reason. Sikh bodies have pressed the name Bandi Chhor Divas, the day of release from imprisonment, since the early 2000s in order to make that reason explicit.
2. What is remembered is the freeing of Guru Hargobind, the sixth Guru, from the fort at Gwalior, where the Mughal emperor Jahangir had held him.
3. Sikhs recount that the Guru refused to leave unless the princes imprisoned with him were released too, and that he was granted as many as could hold on to his cloak.
4. He is said to have had a cloak made with fifty two tassels, so that fifty two princes walked out holding one each, which is why the day is named for release rather than for lamps.
5. On his return to Amritsar the city was lit with lamps, and the Harmandir Sahib is still illuminated and set about with fireworks on that night.
6. Sikhs and Hindus in Punjab keep overlapping customs on the same evening, and Sikh teachers are careful to say what Sikhs commemorate rather than to comment on anyone else's observance.

The birth gurpurbs

1. The two most widely kept gurpurbs are the birthdays of Guru Nanak, the first Guru, and Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth.
2. Guru Nanak's gurpurb falls at the November full moon and is the largest Sikh occasion of the year in much of the diaspora.
3. Preparation is textual. An Akhand Path, an unbroken reading of the whole Guru Granth Sahib by a relay of readers, begins about forty eight hours ahead and is timed to finish on the morning itself.
4. The day brings an early service, kirtan through the morning, katha on the Guru's life, Ardas, and langar running for hours.
5. Guru Gobind Singh's gurpurb falls in late December or early January and follows the same pattern, with more attention to the Khalsa and to gatka.
6. Sikhs mark these days by doing what the Guru taught rather than by re-enacting his life. There is no image of the Guru at the centre of the celebration and no relic to carry.
7. Many gurdwaras now attach blood donation drives and food collections to the day, presenting sewa as the fitting way to keep a Guru's birthday.

The martyr gurpurbs

1. Two gurpurbs mark deaths rather than births, and they are kept in a different register: solemn, and read as an account of what the Gurus were willing to pay.
2. Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, died in Mughal custody at Lahore in 1606, and Sikhs remember his martyrdom in the hot month of Jeth.
3. The customary observance fits the season. Sikhs set up chhabeel, roadside stalls giving out sweetened cold milk to passers by, so the day is marked by relieving thirst.
4. Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Guru, was executed at Delhi in 1675 after intervening for Kashmiri Pandits who had appealed to him against forced conversion.
5. Sikhs therefore describe him as having died for the religious freedom of people who were not Sikhs, and Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib stands at the site of the execution.
6. His gurpurb is kept in November, and Sikh teachers use it to state that the faith is not held for its own members alone.
7. Both days are called shahidi gurpurbs, from shahid, martyr. Neither is treated as an occasion for triumph or for reprisal against anybody.